Quotes about mind
page 87

“The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

As quoted in his obituary, in the New York Times, 24 September, 1939
Attributed from posthumous publications

Sun

“I want to reach the state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture. Perhaps I might be satisfied momentarily with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind..”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

“Our family members are believers in Islam. We observe Islamic proprieties and behave in good faith. Believing in Allah, cultivating our minds and disposition, we aim to be good human beings. In particular, it is important to be respectful in the implemation of our prayer and our family members ought to observe the rules of prayer.”

Ma Fuxiang (1876–1932) Chinese politician

The completion of the idea of dual loyalty towards China and Islam, Masumi, Matsumoto, 2010-06-28 http://science-islam.net/article.php3?id_article=676&lang=fr,

Family, Faith

“It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Introduction : Woman as Other http://books.google.com/books?id=kUW0AAAAIAAJ&q=%22It+is+doubtless+impossible+to+approach+any+human+problems+with+a+mind+free+from+bias%22&pg=PA20#v=onepage The Second Sex (1949)

Problem

“Deep State' is no conspiracy theory. There's nothing mythical about the Republican and Democratic career government workers, embedded like parasites in the bowels of the bureaucracy, the intelligence community, the military, and a like-minded media, who've risen on their hind legs to protect their turf and protest an agenda that leaves them out in the cold.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Elon Musk, Et al.: The Corporate Arm Of The Deep State," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/06/03/elon-musk-et-al-the-corporate-arm-of-the-deepstate-n2335618 Townhall.com, June 3, 2017 2010s, 2017

Intelligence, Communication

“Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter…”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

Source: The Mysterious Universe (1930), p. 137, 1937 ed.

Knowledge, Reality, Universe, Appearance

“Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"Friendships"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Friendship, People, Parting

“Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Not found in Burke's writings. It was almost certainly first published in Charles Caleb Colton's Lacon (1820), vol. 1, no. 324
Misattributed

“Sometimes it's hard to concentrate these days. I was thinking about the history of this building [Eventim Apollo] and the Bowie history. So I started to think about that and my mind began to wander. It's not a good…So I haven't really been talking about some things and I kind of… now it feels like it's conspicuous because I lost a really close friend of mine, somebody who…I'll say this too, I grew up as 4 boys, 4 brothers, and I lost my brother 2 years ago tragically like that in an accident and after that and losing a few other people, I'm not good at it, meaning I'm not…I have not been willing to accept the reality and that's just how I'm dealing with it (applause starts). No, no, no, no. So I want to be there for the family, be there for the community, be there for my brothers in my band, certainly the brothers in his band. But these things will take time but my friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…These things take time and I just want to send this out to everyone who was affected by it and they all back home and here appreciate it so deeply the support and the good thoughts of a man who was a… you know he wasn't just a friend he was someone I looked up to like my older brother. About two days after the news, I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would've loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am like woke me up. Like big memories, memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles. And then I couldn't stop the memories. And trying to sleep it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn't stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours worth of…you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?! And I didn't want to be sad, wanted to be grateful not sad. I'm still thinking about those memories and I will live with these memories in my heart and I will…love him forever.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Talking about Chris Cornell for the first time since his death during a concert in London on June 6, 2017.

Love, People, Sadness, Family

“You, therefore, if you seek ever to have quiet minds before the last day, follow the few and not the crowd.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Voi dunque, se cercate aver la mente
anzi l'extremo dí queta già mai,
seguite i pochi, et non la volgar gente.
Canzone 99, st. 3
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

“Tyrannical towards himself, he must be tyrannical towards others. All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kind ship, love, friendship, gratitude and even honor must be suppressed in him and give place to the cold and single minded passion for revolution.”

Sergey Nechayev book Catechism of a Revolutionary

Catechism of a Revolutionary (1869)

Love, Friendship, Passion, Gratitude

“All these young minds the revolution has heated up and brought to flower before their time, before their age.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Age, Flowers, Time

“I have peasant origins, this kneading hardness. One grandfather was a peasant, the other a foreman in a cigarette factory. I trained my mind whole life. For example, I studied poems by heart, from Mickiewicz to Mayakovsky. (in answer to the question of how he managed to stay active scientifically for so long)”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

Life, Question, Study, Heart

“If you gaze at a single leaf on a single tree, you do not see the other leaves. If you face the tree with no intention and do not fix your eyes on a single leaf, then you will see all the many leaves. If your mind is preoccupied with one leaf, you do not see the others, if you do not set your attention on one; you will see hundreds and thousands of leaves.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

A Hereditary Book on the Art of War (1632)

Tree

“The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

"The Office of the People in Art, Government and Religion", pp. 426-7
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

Intelligence, Wealth

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature."”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Free-thinker mentality.
Letter to Beatrice F. in response to a question about whether he was a "free thinker" (17 December 1952), p. 121
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

God, Law, Feeling, Idea

“De Bellaigue is at pains to portray Mossadegh as — in the words of the jacket copy — “one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America.” But the trouble is, there is nothing in Mossadegh’s career — spanning half a century, as provincial governor, cabinet minister, and finally prime minister — to portray him as even remotely a lover of liberty. De Bellaigue quotes Mossadegh as saying that a trusted leader is “that person whose every word is accepted and followed by the people.” To which de Bellaigue adds: “His understanding of democracy would always be coloured by traditional ideas of Muslim leadership, whereby the community chooses a man of outstanding virtue and follows him wherever he takes them.” Word for word, that could have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s definition of a true leader. Mossadegh also made a habit of appearing in his street meetings with a copy of the Koran in hand. According to de Bellaigue, Mossadegh liked to say that “anyone forgetting Islam is base and dishonourable, and should be killed.” During his premiership, Mossadegh demonstrated his dictatorial tendency to the full: Not once did he hold a full meeting of the council of ministers, ignoring the constitutional rule of collective responsibility. He dissolved the senate, the second chamber of the Iranian parliament, and shut down the Majlis, the lower house. He suspended a general election before all the seats had been decided and chose to rule with absolute power. He disbanded the high council of national currency and dismissed the supreme court. During much of his tenure, Tehran lived under a curfew while hundreds of his opponents were imprisoned. Toward the end of his premiership, almost all of his friends and allies had broken with him. Some even wrote to the secretary general of the United Nations to intervene to end Mossadegh’s dictatorship. But was Mossadegh a man of the people, as de Bellaigue portrays him? Again, the author’s own account provides a different picture. A landowning prince and the great-great-grandson of a Qajar king, Mossadegh belonged to the so-called thousand families who owned Iran. He and all his children were able to undertake expensive studies in Switzerland and France. The children had French nannies and, when they fell sick, were sent to Paris or Geneva for treatment. (De Bellaigue even insinuates that Mossadegh might have had a French sweetheart, although that is improbable.) On the one occasion when Mossadegh was sent to internal exile, he took with him a whole retinue, including his cook… As a model of patriotism, too, Mossadegh is unconvincing. According to his own memoirs, at the end of his law studies in Switzerland, he had decided to stay there and acquire Swiss citizenship. He changed his mind when he was told that he would have to wait ten years for that privilege. At the same time, Farmanfarma secured a “good post” for him in Iran, tempting him back home.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of Mossadegh" https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/302213/myths-mossadegh/page/0/1, National Review (June 25, 2012).

Pain, Children, People, Family

“My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

My Days Among the Dead Are Past http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1957.html, st. 1 (1818).

Past, Dead

“She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

Life, Wisdom, Stupidity, Angels

“No society can possibly be built upon a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man. Just as a man will not grow horns or a tail, so will he not exist as man if he has no mind of his own. In reality even those who do not believe in the liberty of the individual believe in their own.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict by Joan V. Bondurant (1965) University of California Press, Berkeley: CA, p. 174. Harijan (1 February 1942) p. 27
1940s

Nature, Reality, Freedom

“Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 176-177.

Love, Country

“For me, the adventures of the mind, each inflection of thought, each movement, nuance, growth, discovery, is a source of exhilaration.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

November, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

“A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.”

Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) British artist

George Stillman Hillard Six Months in Italy (1853), ch. 5.
Misattributed

“I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,'yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam [Rig-Veda, 1.24.7]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing…. Wanton waste, careless spoiling of physical things in an incredibly short time, loose disorder, misuse of service and materials due either to vital grasping or to tamasic inertia are baneful to prosperity and tend to drive away or discourage the Wealth-Power. These things have long been rampant in the society and, if that continues, an increase in our means might well mean a proportionate increase in the wastage and disorder and neutralise the material advantage. This must be remedied if there is to be any sound progress…. Asceticism for its own sake is not the ideal of this yoga, but self-control in the vital and right order in the material are a very important part of it… and even an ascetic discipline is better for our purpose than a loose absence of true control. Mastery of the material does not mean having plenty and profusely throwing it out or spoiling it as fast as it comes or faster. Mastery implies in it the right and careful utilisation of things and also a self-control in their use…. There is a consciousness in [things], a life which is not the life and consciousness of man and animal which we know, but still secret and real. That is why we must have a respect for physical things and use them rightly, not misuse and waste, ill-treat or handle with a careless roughness. This feeling of all being consciousness or alive comes when our own physical consciousness'and not the mind only'awakes out of its obscurity and becomes aware of the One in all things, the Divine everywhere.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Undated
India's Rebirth

Life, Children, Truth, Secret

“Formulating and structuring a system provide methods for relating (1) what the system consists of in the mind of the persons or group desiring it; (2)what it means in terms of the persons or group designing and building it; and (3) in terms of the persons or groups operating, using and servicing it. They provide a set of "reasonable" parts and methods of relating them so that the many persons working on the system can understand the whole in sufficient detail for their purposes, and their particular parts in explicit detail so that they may contribute their best efforts to the extent required. A further purpose of system formulation is to recognize the magnitude of the job, including the possible pitfalls.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 70; Rest of first paragraph of Ch.3

Understanding, Effort, Parting, Personality

“It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

A Moosehead Journal.
Literary Essays, vol. I (1864-1890)

Thinking, Reading

“Maalik! You must create in your mind kindness, compassion and love for your subjects. Do not behave towards them as if you are a voracious and ravenous beast and as if your success lies in devouring them.
Remember, Maalik, that amongst your subjects there are two kinds of people: those who have the same religion as you have; they are brothers to you, and those who have religions other than that of yours, they are human beings like you. Men of either category suffer from the same weaknesses and disabilities that human beings are inclined to, they commit sins, indulge in vices either intentionally or foolishly and unintentionally without realizing the enormity of their deeds. Let your mercy and compassion come to their rescue and help in the same way and to the same extent that you expect Allah to show mercy and forgiveness to you.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Variant translation:
Awaken your heart to kindness and mercy for the people and love and tenderness for them. Never, never act with them like a predatory beast which seeks to be satiated by devouring them, for the people fall into two categories: they are either your brethren in faith or your kindred in creation.
Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar

Love, Men, People, Religion

“I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Markham Sutherland to Arthur "Letter I : Huntley Parsonage, September 4, 1843"
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Sincerity

“The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Probably a paraphrase of this line from De l’Allemagne, Pt. 3. ch. 10. "Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line." Not known from Goethe's works.
Misattributed

“India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

The Case for India (1931)

Love, Understanding

“[T]he heavens were opened, and two personages clothed in light or fire descended and stood before him. As soon as this light surrounded him, and he was enclosed or enveloped in it, his mind was caught away from earthly objects and things, and he saw these two glorious personages, their countenances shining with exceeding great brilliancy. One of them, while pointing to the other, addressed him in this language, "Behold my beloved son, hear ye him."”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 15:181 (September 22, 1872).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

Light, Clothes

“I was not a poet. I felt no consolation in this knowledge, but only a red anger that evolution could allow such sensitivity and such inadequacy to coexist in the same mind. In one ego, my ego, screaming like a hare caught in a gin.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Knowledge, Anger

“Even the modern word "concept" means "a grasping together," implying that the mind itself, in its act of knowing, functions like the intervening hand (in contrast to its ancient counterpart, “idea,” “that which can be beheld,” which implies that the mind functions like the receiving eye). And modern science rejects, as meaningless or useless, questions that cannot be answered by the application of method. Science becomes not the representation and demonstration of truth, but an art: the art of finding the truth—or, rather, that portion of truth that lends itself to be artfully found.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 8

Truth, Art, Idea, Question

“Big business, then, was behind the existence and curriculum of the public educational system, explicitly to teach young minds to submit and obey, to pay homage to the ‘corporate liberal’ system which the politicians, a multitude of intellectuals and many big businessmen created.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

Source: “Big Business and the Rise of American Statism,” 1969, p. 45

Education, Business

“It is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 7: The Glacier Meadows

Pleasure, Sun

“Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Les Enfants Terribles translation by Rosamond Lehmann (1929)

Wealth

“Simon, a man of the sect of the Essens, desired leave to speak his mind freely, and said that the vision denoted a change in the affairs of Archelaus, and that not for the better; that oxen, because that animal takes uneasy pains in his labors, denoted afflictions, and indeed denoted, further, a change of affairs, because that land which is ploughed by oxen cannot remain in its former state; and that the ears of corn being ten, determined the like number of years, because an ear of corn grows in one year; and that the time of Archelaus's government was over. And thus did this man expound the dream. Now on the fifth day after this dream came first to Archelaus, the other Archelaus, that was sent to Judea by Caesar to call him away, came hither also.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 17.13.3
Antiquities of the Jews

Pain, Dreams, Affliction, Change

“It is said by parrot-minded critics that Owen was "a man of one idea," whereas he was a man of more ideas than any public man England knew in his day. He shared and befriended every new conception of moment and promise, in science, in education, and government. His mind was hospitable to all projects of progress; and he himself contributed more original ideas for the conduct of public affairs than any other thinker of his generation…. Because some of his projects were so far reaching that they required a century to mature them, onlookers who expected them to be perfected at once, say he "failed in whatever he proposed." While the truth is he succeeded in more things than any public man ever undertook. If he made more promises than he fulfilled, he fulfilled more than any other public man ever made. Thus, he was not a man of "one idea" but of many. Nor did his projects fail. The only social Community for which he was responsible was that of New Harmony, in Indiana; which broke up through his too great trust in uneducated humanity — a fault which only the generous commit. The communities of Motherwell and Orbiston, of Manea, Fen, and Queenwood in Hampshire were all undertaken without his authority, and despite his warning of the adequacy of the means for success. They failed, as he predicted they would. Critics, skilled in coming to conclusions without knowing the facts, impute these failures to him.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Memorial dedication (1902)

Truth, Education, Communication, Idea

“The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

I, 3
Variant translation: The things which … are esteemed as the greatest good of all … can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)

Life, Men, Pleasure, Sense

“Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a gnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being anonymous, coming from within, it is more powerful and compelling. That is how the world improves-the inner aiding and blessing the outer. When gnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea; the name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean. When a gnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Universal mind
Source: "I am That." P.89.

Wisdom, World, Sense, Universe

“When the Seasons' changes thus confront the mind
What comfort can the Doctrine of Tao give?
It will teach me to watch the days and months fly
Without grieving that Youth slips away;
If the Fleeting World is but a long dream,
It does not matter whether one is young or old.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"At the End of Spring" (A.D. 810)
Arthur Waley's translations

Youth, World, Dreams, Change

“I'm only warming up. I had a fantastic season, I proved age is just a number, Everything is in your head. Whatever you want to do you will do it. It's a master mind game. If I want to make it I'll make it. If I want to do it I'll do it.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

Talking about his age doesn't affect his game http://www.espn.in/football/soccer-transfers/story/2880702/zlatan-ibrahimovic-has-made-choice-amid-manchester-united-talk Attributed

Age, Game, Season

“Gentlemen, I speak for myself as well as for you: I never read anything about what may come before me in a Court of Justice; I keep my mind free from everything of the kind. There is often a necessity for me to look into the law: but I never suffer my mind to be biassed by reports, or such papers or pamphlets as are written with a view to pervert justice.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Wilkes' Case (1763), 19 How. St. Tr. 1410.

Justice, Law, Suffering, Reading

“The sundering of a scientific from a poetic truth is the primal mark of the administrative mind.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 9

Truth

“What are the rewards of the tiny, ingrown, biological family opposing its closed circle of affection to a forbidding world of the strong ties between parent and children, ties which an active personal relation from birth until death?… Perhaps these are too heavy prices to pay for a specialization of emotions which might be bought about the other ways, notable through coeducation. And with such a question in our minds its interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, the Electra complexes, and so on.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 147; Partly cited in: E. Michael Jones (1993) Degenerate Moderns: Modernity As Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior. p. 24-25

Death, Women, Men, Children

“Many young women of my generation believe they live in a post-feminist world, without unfair sex discrimination -- a world in which career paths are designed with fathers and mothers in mind. Unfortunately, that world doesn't exist quite yet.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (April 17, 2012).
Articles

Women, World, Sex

“What on earth should we do if we had no matches to make, or mar; no "unfortunate attachments" to shake our heads over; no flirtations to speculate about and comment upon with knowing smiles; no engagements "on" or "off" to speak our minds about, nosing out every little circumstance, and ferreting out our game to their very hole, as if all their affairs, their hopes, trials, faults, or wrongs, were being transacted for our own private and peculiar entertainment! Of all forms of gossip — I speak of mere gossip, as distinguished from the carrion-crow and dunghill-fly system of scandal-mongering — this tittle-tattle about love-affairs is the most general, the most odious, and the most dangerous.
Every one of us must have known within our own experience many an instance of dawning loves checked, unhappy loves made cruelly public, happy loves embittered, warm, honest loves turned cold, by this horrible system of gossiping about young or unmarried people…”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 8

Love, Happiness, People, Smile

“I made up that story to change your mind. I could have been somebody else but now I'm me this time. "Intro (Day I Forgot Album)"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Change, Time

“We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind. A man will boast to one person of an action — say some sharp transaction in trade-^which he would be ashamed to own to another.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 184-5 (1922)

Imagination, Personality

“If one is able to convey to the dying person that his mind is bound to this decaying body only for the present life span, it is calming. If one adds that mind is beyond death and birth, like space, emerging appearances of confusion and aging become more acceptable. This view confers the often missing dignity on the last part of life. It helps the dying to increasingly relax, and oneself to face one’s own death more fearlessly.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Fearless Death: Buddhist Wisdom on the Art of Dying (2012)

Life, Death, Age, Birth

“While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made their way among its agricultural classes almost as rapidly as elsewhere. The more commercial society became, however, the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values. The more farming as a self-sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in what was being left behind. And the more rapidly the farmers' sons moved into the towns, the more nostalgic the whole culture became about its rural past. The American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and rural life that I have chosen to designate as the agrarian myth. The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins.
Like any complex of ideas, the agrarian myth cannot be defined in a phrase, but its component themes form a clear pattern. Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 23

Life, Men, People, Way

“All our power lies in both mind and body; we employ the mind to rule, the body rather to serve; the one we have in common with the Gods, the other with the brutes.”
Sed nostra omnis vis in animo et corpore sita est; animi imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur; alterum nobis cum dis, alterum cum beluis commune est.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter I

God

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman was well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Dreams, Art

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life, God, War, Way

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Paul of Tarsus book Epistle to the Philippians

Philippians 4: 6-7 (KJV)
Variant translations:
Do not be anxious over anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication along with thanksgiving, let your petitions be made known to God; and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your mental powers by means of Christ Jesus.
Epistle to the Philippians

God, Peace, Understanding, Heart

“According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.”

William Whewell (1794–1866) English philosopher & historian of science

Part 1, Book 1, ch. 2, sect. 7.
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840)

World, Idea, Knowledge, Parting

“Power of auto-suggestion known in the Middle Ages. The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought. The human being individually is also entirely governed by his own thoughts, good or bad. The powerful action of the mind over the body, which explains the effects of suggestion, was well known to the great thinkers of the Middle Ages, whose vigorous intelligence embraced the sum of human knowledge.”

Emile Coué (1857–1926) French psychologist and pharmacist

Source: Autosuggestion : My method (2014), Chapter I. The reality of auto-suggestion.

Age, World, Intelligence, Idea

“First there was space—endless, limitless space, so far from everything, so brutal, so frigid, so uncaring that it numbed the mind, not so much from fear or loneliness as from the realization that in this eternity of space the thing that was himself was dwarfed to an insignificance no yardstick could measure.”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

“The Thing in the Stone” (p. 220)
Short Fiction, Skirmish (1977)

Fear, Loneliness

“It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 269

Pleasure, World, Problem, Learning

“Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

"Dawkins attacks 'alien rubbish' taught in Muslim faith schools", Daily Mail (8 October 2011) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046715/Richard-Dawkins-attacks-alien-rubbish-taught-Muslim-faith-schools.html

Children, Universe, Science, Personality

“Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life, Health, Hope

“I'll know his inmost aims and (doubt me not)
extract the guarded mysteries of his mind.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Vantomi in lui scoprir gl'intimi sensi,
E i secreti pensier trargli del petto.
Canto XVIII, stanza 59 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“[A] number of points are worth making at once [that challenge Foucault’s Madness and Civilization]: (1) There is ample evidence of medieval cruelty towards the insane; (2) In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the mad were already confined, to cells, jails or even cages; (3) ‘dialogue’ or no ‘dialogue’, even madness during those times was frequently connected with sin -- even in the Ship of Fools mythology; and, to that extent, it was regarded in a far less benevolent light than suggested by Foucault (pre-modern minds accepted the reality of madness -- ‘madness as a part of truth’ -- just as they accepted the reality of sin; but this does not mean they valued madness, any more than sin; (4) as Martin Schrenk (himself a severe critic Foucault) has shown, early modern madhouses developed from medieval hospitals and monasteries rather than as reopened leprosaria; (5) the Great Confinement was primarily aimed not at deviance but at poverty -- criminal poverty, crazy poverty or just plain poverty; the notion that it heralded (in the name of the rising bourgeoise) a moral segregation does not bear close scrutiny; (6) at any rate, as stressed by Klaus Doerner, another of critic of Foucault (Madmen and the Bourgeoisie, 1969), that there was no uniform state-controlled confinement: the English and German patterns, for example, strayed greatly from the Louis Quatorzian Grand Renfermement; (7) Foucault’s periodization seems to me amiss. By the late eighteenths century, confinement of the poor was generally deemed a failure; but it is then that confinement of the mad really went ahead, as so conclusively shown in statistics concerning England, France, and the United States; (8) Tuke and Pinel did not ‘invent’ mental illness. Rather, they owe much to prior therapies and often relied also on their methods; (9) moreover, in nineetenth-century England moral treatment was not that central in the medicalization of madness. Far from it: as shown by Andrew Scull, physicians saw Tukean moral therapy as a lay threat to their art, and strove to avoid it or adapt it to their own practice. Once more, Foucault’s epochal monoliths crumble before the contradictory wealth of the historical evidence.”

José Guilherme Merquior book Foucault

Source: Foucault (1985), pp. 28-29

Truth, Age, Fools, Art

“We had a large old-fashioned battery, a wet cell, in the kitchen, hooked up to an electric bell. The bell was too complicated to understand at first, and the battery, to my mind, was more immediately attractive, for it contained an earthenware tube with a massive, gleaming copper cylinder in the middle, immersed in a bluish liquid, all this inside an outer glass casing, also filled with fluid, and containing a slimmer bar of zinc. It looked like a miniature chemical factory of sorts, and I thought I saw little bubbles of gas, at times, coming off the zinc. The Daniell cell (as it was called) had a thoroughly nineteenth-century, Victorian look about it, and this extraordinary object was making electricity all by itself—not by rubbing or friction, but just by the virtue of its own chemical reactions.”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), p. 160

Fashion, Understanding, Time

“Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram… he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. I

Men, God, Religion, Time

“That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters, ch. 50 (1864-5)
Wives and Daughters

People, World, Thinking

“American psychology inherited its physical body from German experimentalism, but it got its mind from Darwin.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 494

“The Chairman: Mr. Taylor, do you believe that any system of scientific management induced by a desire for greater profits would revolutionize the minds of the employers to such an extent that they would immediately, voluntarily and generally enforce the golden rule.?
Mr. Taylor: If they had any sense, they would.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 148 ; Cited in: Frank Barkley Copley. Frederick W. Taylor, father of scientific management https://archive.org/stream/frederickwtaylor01copl#page/n5/mode/2up. Published 1923. p. ii.

Sense

“When one intends to move or when one intends to speak, one should first examine one’s own mind and then act appropriately with composure. When one sees one’s mind to be attached or repulsed, then one should neither act nor speak, but remain still like a piece of wood. When my mind is haughty, sarcastic, full of conceit and arrogance, ridiculing, evasive and deceitful, when it is inclined to boast, or when it is contemptuous of others, abusive, and irritable, then I should remain still like a piece of wood. When my mind is averse to the interests of others and seeks my own self-interest, or when it wishes to speak out of a desire for an audience, then I will remain still like a piece of wood. When it is impatient, indolent, timid, impudent, garrulous, or biased in my own favor, then I will remain still like a piece of wood.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 5.47
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

“one print gets born from the other one, and that is exactly the right thing of it - it keeps the mind ready.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): ..de ene druk wordt uit de andere geboren en dat is juist het mooie, dat houdt de geest vaardig.
In a letter to August Henkels, 23 June 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 105
1940's

“(Generally or) Men in general are too inclined to let themselves be overawed by what is quantitatively great. It is thus that even thoughtful minds let themselves be impressed ("éblouis", Fr.) by the strenght of Napoléon 1st, to much so that (to the point that) seeing (to see) in his person something august (or majestic), when indeed (in fact) he only have had ("il n'ait eu que", Fr.) selfish aims (or plans). Half the earth ("globe terrrstre", Fr.) is put to fire and sword to obtain to a man the pleasant sensation of his own absolute power.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 43.

Men, Personality, Selfishness

“The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Cowley http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lvwal10h.htm Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“Let me repeat, gentlemen, that a right-minded and true-hearted statesman who has had as much sovereign power placed in his hands as you have placed in mine should regard himself as the servant of the Senate; and often of the people as a whole; and sometimes of private citizens, too. I do not regret this view, because I have always found you to be generous, just, and indulgent masters.”
Dixi et nunc et saepe alias, p[atres]. c[onscripti]., bonum et salutarem principem, quem vos tanta et tam libera potestate instruxistis, senatui servire debere et universis civibus saepe et plerumque etiam singulis; neque id dixisse me paenitet, et bono et aequos et faventes vos habui dominos et adhuc habeo.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

Variant translation: Conscript Fathers, I have often said it both now and at other times, that a good and useful prince, whom you have invested with so great and absolute power, ought to be a slave to the senate, to the whole body of the people, and often to individuals likewise: nor am I sorry that I have said it. I have always found you good, kind, and indulgent masters, and still find you so.
To the Senate, from Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, ch.29

People, Heart

“The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the cruelest delusions which has befuddled the human mind.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

A misquotation by Ronald Reagan in a 9 March 1982 speech, reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 13-14. In fact, Churchill used a very similar line ("To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.") several times beginning with a speech at Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 19 February 1904.
Misattributed

Idea

“Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Introduction
The Echo of Greece (1957)

Men, Art, Thinking, Freedom

“Sail on down the line,
About half a mile or so.
And I don't really wanna know ah
Where you're going.
Maybe once or twice you see
Time after time I tried
Hold on to what we got.
But now you're going
And I don't mind.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Sail On (1979).
Song lyrics, With the Commodores

Time

“From day one his standard operating procedure … was a blend of ignorance, amnesia, and dissembling. Like a panicky passenger lunging for a life preserver, he would, under stress, concoct almost any fact or anecdote to advance his ideological beliefs. Ronald Reagan brought to mind Will Rogers' comment that "It's not what he doesn't know that bothers me, it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so."”

Mark J. Green (1945) American lawyer

Comments on Ronald Reagan, in Reagan's Reign of Error (1987)
see Josh Billings

Life

“You need clear, energetic minds, in order to appreciate the exalted character of the truth, to value the atonement, and to place the right estimate upon eternal things.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Counsels On Diet and Foods (1938), Section 2, p. 47

Truth

“All the plagues and evils of “the European mind” are products of the fallen man and the relics of barbarian cultures, not of Christ and His word. All that is good in “the European mind” is a result of Christian culture, not of race.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Writings, The New Racism (1980)

Evil, Christ

“We may observe, that, notwithstanding the dogmatical, imperious style of all superstition, the conviction of the religionists, in all ages, is more affected than real, and scarcely ever approaches, in any degree, to that solid belief and persuasion, which governs us in the common affairs of life. Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry. But nature is too hard for all their endeavours, and suffers not the obscure, glimmering light, afforded in those shadowy regions, to equal the strong impressions, made by common sense and by experience. The usual course of men's conduct belies their words, and shows, that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XII - With regard to doubt or conviction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Life, Men, Age, Faith

“Sense control and mastery of the mind”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume III: Solace for the Heart in Difficult Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2000)

Sense

“p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Mover to the Glow-worms

War, Way, Home, Study

“How old are you Hogo.” “Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant age to be.” “You don’t mind then. That you are not young.” “It has its buggy aspects as what does not?” “You don’t mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death.”

Donald Barthelme book Snow White

“No, Jane.”
Source: Snow White (1967), p. 128.

Death, Age

“All the usual rules of uprising realpolitik still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar of dialectic of dissent which—simply stated—dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seem often to baffle the military and political mind.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“A Few Notes on the Culture” (pp. 168-169)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Nature

“Such was Gods Poem, this Worlds new Essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungovern'd parts no Correspondence knew,
An artless war from thwarting Motions grew;
Till they to Number and fixt Rules were brought
By the eternal Minds Poetique Thought.
Water and Air he for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Flame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturns string a touch more soft and grave.
The motions Strait, and Round, and Swift, and Slow,
And Short, and Long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd Dance of All.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 451-464
Davideis (1656)

God, War, World, Art

“So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren’t human, but they were people, she told herself; it’s not them, they’re us.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 10 : Wheels

People

“The war has revealed an overpowering national instinct. The conflicting theories of the exact nature and limitations of our government had blinded the shrewdest minds to the fact that we were a nation, with all the feelings and instincts of a nation, and that our quarrels must be settled inside and not outside of the Union.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War, Feeling, Nature

“Until you change the sub conscience mind, you cannot say that you have learned something. If something is worth learning, you should stick with it until you have changed your subconscious mind.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

52
Ki Sayings (2003)

Learning, Change

“I call "crystallization" that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

Source: De L'Amour (On Love) (1822), Ch. 1

Perfection

“You can imagine my dismay when I got to Cambridge and found that I had done everything wrong. I shouldn't have named the chimps; I should have given them numbers. I couldn't talk about their personalities, their minds or their feelings because that was unique to us.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

Feeling, Imagination, Personality

“Ridicule may be the evidence of wit or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 497.

Truth

“Cool how many layers of my mind there are to clear, each time I do it…& how different my world is then.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

12 February 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/36269718428073984 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

World, Time

“I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition. In the midst of all this India remains immovable and that is her glory. It is a charge against India that her people are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge really against our merit. What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. Many thrust their advice upon India, and she remains steady. This is her beauty: it is the sheet-anchor of our hope.
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct.””

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Sect. 13
Variant translations: I believe that the civilisation into which India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become westernised; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.
Greece, Egypt, Rome — all have been erased from this world, yet we continue to exist. There is something in us, that our character never ceases from the face of this world, defying global hostility for centuries.
1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

Men, Fate, People, World

“In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us; while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating quality of the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought that determines his actions.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Youth, Age, World, Time

“.. to challenge the objective nature of being. The notion of being is presented here as relative rather than irrefutable: it is merely a projection of our minds, a whim of our thinking. The mind has the right to establish being wherever it cares to and for as long as it likes. There is no intrinsic difference between being and fantasy.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote in a letter of Dubuffet to Arnold Glimcher, as cited by Valery Oisteanu, Jean Dubuffet: The Last Two Years http://brooklynrail.org/2012/03/artseen/jean-dubuffet-the-last-two-years. The Brooklyn Rail, March 2012. posthumous

Nature, Thinking

“The Internal Revenue Code of 1954, a document longer than "War and Peace", is phrased -inevitably, perhaps- in the sort of jargon that stuns the mind and disheartens the spirit.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

War, Peace

“We should understand that our problems do not exist outside of ourself, but are part of our mind that experiences unpleasant feelings.”

Kelsang Gyatso (1931) Tibetan writer and lama

Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom (2011) ISBN 9781616060060

Feeling, Understanding, Problem, Parting

“The object of group truth is group-confirmation and perpetuation; while individual truth has no object other than discovering itself and involves neither proofs nor priests. In order, however, to win any acceptance it must translate itself into group truth, it must accommodate itself to the fact-curriculum of the group. But not only is such truth forced to submit to group terminology and order, but the group conscience demands that the individual mind serve it by working with the purposes of the group. The group, indeed, tries to preclude all idiosyncratic thought-activity and to use what intelligence it can control against it.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Corpus", from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)